


the water's fine

by bog gremlin (tomatocages)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Healing, Hunk (Voltron) is a Good Friend, Hunk is a very long-suffering friend tbh, Intimacy, Kissing, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Season 8 does not exist, Sheithlentines 2021, Swimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:55:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29404434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomatocages/pseuds/bog%20gremlin
Summary: After the war ends and Hunk’s attempt at teaching him how to surf goes awry, Keith resolves to relax — or learn how to relax, anyway. Shiro helps. Really, they help each other.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 96
Collections: Sheithlentines 2021





	the water's fine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sepiacigarettes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sepiacigarettes/gifts).



> Happy Sheithlentines to Abbey (sepiacigarettes)!!!! I was so pleased to have you as my recipient and I hope you enjoy reading your gift as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. You asked for so many good things it was hard to narrow down to your request for “sheith healing together after the war,” with a li’l bonus Hunk.

* * *

After the war was over, Keith realized he hadn’t left his hyper-vigilance behind. It manifested in small ways, ways that were easy to work around or to ignore, ways that everyone living in and around the Garrison exhibited as well — so he didn’t devote the same single-mindedness to his own comfort that he’d given to the Voltron mission, or to reconstruction, or even to brushing dust out of the space-wolf’s fur. Everyone, Keith thought, checked the corners of a room before fully entering. Everyone migrated to the gym when sleep was elusive. Everyone knew not to make sudden movements in a crowded meeting room.

It wasn’t comfortable. But it was familiar: it was easy to maintain. It was so familiar, in fact, that Keith had forgotten about it by the time Hunk persuaded him to come visit.

“You work too much,” Hunk said over the comms. He was browner than ever from the sun at his family’s island, and his skin was glossy with renewed muscle and fat even through the video screen. “I’ll teach you how to surf — and my family’s been asking to meet you ever since you helped me liberate them. It’ll be a vacation.”

So Keith had packed his bag and flown his own small ship to Hunk’s home. The dinner had been pleasant, if overwhelming; Keith had spent most of it tucked into a corner of the room, Hunk’s reassuring bulk to one side. It was manageable. But when it was time for the promised surfing lesson, something within him snapped. 

“I’m waiting,” Hunk called from the water’s edge. Keith knew he was holding the lesson up, that he was in some way being Keith-the-killjoy, the way he never meant to be. Hunk was teaching Keith how to surf as a favor, because he had offered it up as a _maybe someday_ during the war, and now that the war was over, he seemed intent on following through. It was supposed to be a vacation.

Keith couldn’t bring himself to leave the changing shack above the tideline, though. It wasn’t that he was a prude — and even if he had been, the wetsuit wasn’t much skimpier than his Blade uniform. He felt uncomfortable with the idea of walking across the sand and paddling out to where Hunk was perched on a board, looking for all the world like a king in his own kingdom: perfectly in his element. 

He wiggled his bare feet in the sand, categorizing the different levels of grit and the shifting colors. It felt different from the sand in the desert: softer, less dusty. The sand was half-white and half-blue, like someone had looked at the water and its white-capped waves and thought to reproduce the effect on dry land. Keith wondered how fast he could run on a beach like this, if the slope of the island was constantly redefining itself. 

“Keith,” Hunk said, from outside the shack this time. He must not have bothered to towel off (why would he; it was warm out, and the breeze would dry him in no time at all), because the sand at his feet was dark with the seep of the sea. Keith stared at Hunk’s feet, the only part of him visible from the other side of the curtain: there was a frilly spray of seaweed furled around one brown ankle, caught in Hunk’s sparse leg hair. 

“I’m coming,” Keith managed. He didn’t sound convincing, even to himself. 

Hunk brushed the curtain aside. Keith wondered what kind of picture he made: he knew, intellectually, that he was mostly dressed in his borrowed wetsuit, but he still had his back pressed precariously into the corner of the wooden shack, as though it would offer him any protection if the beach were suddenly ambushed. It felt faintly ridiculous: dinner the night before had been boisterous, unfamiliar, and easier to withstand.

He probably looked pretty bad, judging from how Hunk moved beside him and fussed at the zipper, adjusting the tab until Keith felt the neoprene seal up at the nape of his neck. He breathed a little better. The suit squeezed tight against his skin, in a way that was familiar and confining. Safe. 

“I know how to swim,” Keith said. “It’s not the water.”

“Sure,” Hunk answered. He kept his hand at the back of Keith’s neck, petting him. Keith hated that he felt soothed by the touch, that he could feel the adrenaline rush subsiding. Hunk was a friend; Hunk had fought beside Keith, in the war. Keith’s body trusted him. His palm was warm against Keith’s neck, even through the suit, and the weight was comforting.

“Maybe you need to practice,” Hunk said, later. He’d gone back out and gathered up the paraphernalia of their lesson while Keith had stripped back down to his skin, and then clambered unsteadily back into street clothes. 

“Practice _what_ ,” Keith asked. He picked at the knee of his suit, worrying at the synthetic fiber so he had a better idea of how much stress it could handle before fraying. He was still adjusting to the feeling of regular clothes on his body, the way they soften with the hours of the day, and the wetsuit was another set of data to add to the equation. His armor and his uniform hadn’t had that quality, and despite how relieved he’d felt when he had first undressed, after the last treaty had been signed, he still wasn’t comfortable. Or, rather: he was _too_ comfortable.

“I don’t know, practice being a regular person again,” Hunk said. “No offense. But you were really intense during the whole _saving the world_ business. Maybe you need a hobby, something so you can kinda practice chilling out.”

“You didn’t need a vacation.”

“Uh, yes, I did,” Hunk corrected. “Why do you think I’m surfing every day? Living out here? Going to the market every other day? Don’t tell Lance I quoted him, but I need to find my groove again. I just know what I liked to do when I wasn’t defending the universe, so I’ve got a head start. I didn’t go back to the Garrison.”

Keith thought back to what he’d been doing before Voltron — and then to the time before the Kerberos failure — and then thought Hunk might be right. 

“A hobby,” he muttered. “Got it.”

“Uh oh,” Hunk said. “I know that look.”

“What look?” 

“That look that means you’re about to panic ‘cause you don’t have any hobbies. Maybe you should talk to someone,” Hunk added. He made a face and sighed, compassionate and annoyed all at once: Keith knew he relied too heavily on Hunk’s good nature. That, too, had been easier during the war: over-reliance or death.

Talking to someone. As much as forming words felt like a struggle, Keith thought that might be a good idea.

“Don’t worry about me,” Keith promised. Vowed? “I’ll call Shiro.”

Hunk buried his face in his hands. “Like that’ll help,” he muttered. “The two of you deserve each other,” whatever _that_ meant. 

* * *

Keith allowed Hunk’s advice to fester in the back of his mind during the flight back to the Garrison’s Arizona base. Hunk was good with feelings, and Keith had a policy of paying attention to people who were good at something — how else was he going to learn? But he hadn’t made any progress by the time he landed the little cruiser and disembarked. A benefit of this preoccupation, Keith knew, was that he looked half-angry and distracted as he walked from the hangar to the office he was borrowing while he was stationed on Earth. No one bothered him, though a few junior officers of one kind or another hovered timidly in his wake. Once he was back in his office, the furniture arranged in a way that was familiar and defensible, he lost himself in minutia. Keith wasn’t a good multitasker, but Hunk’s words were like the pull of the Blue Lion in the desert: hard to ignore. 

Eventually, someone sent Shiro to get Keith’s signature on something. The two of them had a back-and-forth that still felt easy, even for Keith. Sometimes talking to Shiro was the only easy part of Keith’s day, even when they were arguing over whose turn it was to pick up dinner from the cafeteria. 

Shiro was in a talkative mood, or was pretending to be in one. He did that sometimes, when Keith needed someone to coax him out of his own head; Shiro said that he recognized the aura or whatever, like Keith radiated a particularly grouchy kind of energy. That was probably true.

“Usually a visit to Hunk evens you out,” Shiro said, handing over the pad for Keith’s signature. Keith scanned the document before he initialed it, partly because he was representing the Blade’s interests and partly because he wanted to organize his response. He felt ashamed of the delay: talking to Shiro was a joy, the one tiny effervescence that Keith looked forward to no matter how grim the day, and treating their conversations like a battle strategy was anathema.

“He gave me some advice,” Keith said. “Hunk thinks I should pick up a hobby. Since I failed to take a vacation.”

Shiro tilted his head to one side. His hair was a little too long to adhere to regulation, and he must have been on the Atlas earlier in the day, because he was still carrying a faint static charge. He looked ethereal. Keith preferred when Shiro looked undeniably human, even if that meant he was sweaty and disheveled, but he understood that Shiro preferred maintaining an aura of unshakable control, especially now that the Garrison knew about the whole dying and coming back to life thing; it made the upper administration less likely to assign him paperwork. “Hunk thinks everyone needs a vacation,” he told Keith. “I don’t know how you could fail at something like that.”

This was true. Hunk believed wholeheartedly in vacation, in _the importance of play_. Keith didn’t think he was spouting bullshit whenever he said stuff like that. Hunk was earnest. Hunk was trustworthy. 

“This time I might agree with him,” Keith answered. Then, changing the subject and failing, he added, “have you ever gone surfing?” 

“I know you’re hard up for records to break, but can’t you let me have one arena where I reign supreme?” Shiro teased. 

“I didn’t even get in the water,” Keith said. “No tactical support out there.” 

A pause filled the room while Shiro recalibrated. “I know what you mean,” he said, finally. Shiro still refused to have his own office. He had told Keith once that it was too much like being trapped in a cell, and besides — he spent all his time with Keith, anyway. Shiro had his own space at Keith’s desk, his own chair, his own drawer filled with snacks and half-used tubes of lip balm. His hand found Keith’s shoulder. “You’ll get better, Keith. I believe in you.”

Shiro’s belief — his touch — was better than Hunk’s had been on that beach. “Thanks,” Keith told him. As always, he meant _thanks_ for more than the pep-talk, or the comfort, or even the company. Shiro was wonderful in his imperfections, in his constant regard, in the way Keith and he had fought together and against each other. 

“My pleasure,” Shiro answered. Like always, he said it with conviction: that helping Keith was a pleasure, that Shiro delighted in Keith’s success just as Keith delighted in Shiro’s. Believing him was easy. 

* * *

Keith tried swimming again, this time in the pool at the gym, but: stripping down to his swimwear was somehow worse. Keith wasn’t sure what was more foreboding, the sense that a warship would materialize out of nowhere and he’d have to man a weapons drone while wearing a towel, or that someone might steal his stuff. He wasn’t a cadet anymore. It wasn’t like he’d get a demerit if he showed up to class missing his uniform jacket. It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford to replace the jacket even if someone did take it. 

He’d just about made up his mind to get into the pool — he’d showered off already, was hovering near the taps in the hallway that led to the pool area — but then he heard footsteps coming from the locker room.

Keith pressed his back against the cold tile wall and willed his breathing quiet, flexed his toes consideringly against the floor. He might slip if he had to leap at an attacker, but he could probably use the momentum. 

“Keith?”

It was only Shiro. Keith sighed and peeled his back away from the wall, ignoring the gooseflesh that was drawing tight across his chest and arms. The cold had gotten into him. “Hey,” he answered. “Swimming?”

Shiro wasn’t dressed for the water. He was still wearing all his clothes: a pair of trekking pants and a blue henley that fit almost as tight across his chest as his undersuit had. He was still wearing shoes, and the water from the floor was puddling around the toes in a way that looked vaguely murky, like he’d come to the locker room from the outdoors. 

“Not in the mood,” Shiro said. He had both his hands in his pockets, the way he did sometimes when he was holding himself back. Keith wondered what it was this time: a bad order from the higher-ups, a personnel issue on the Atlas. 

“I heard the water was fine,” Keith said. He let his head thud back against the wall as Shiro took the last couple of steps needed to stand in front of Keith. Someone walked into the locker room from the pool area, the door squealing loudly in its hinges. Keith couldn’t see who it was. Shiro was blocking him from anyone else’s view, sheltering him. This close Keith could smell him, the clean scent of fresh deodorant and hair product. It softened the edge of chlorine that pervaded the room.

“Keith.” Shiro said. He dragged his hands out of his pockets and took hold of Keith’s shoulders. A port in the storm: Keith stepped all the way away from the wall and felt his heart rate start to settle. “Come on, Keith. We’ll take care of this. Just not here.”

* * *

“Can that thing get wet?” Keith asked. After bundling him in a towel and whisking Keith out of the locker area, still dressed in his swim briefs, Shiro had dragged him to the Atlas for a change of clothes. Then Shiro had scruffed his hands through his own hair and said, “Hunk’s right. We both need a vacation,” before logging the time off requests in the Garrison system. They’d gone offworld the same day, making do with the camping supplies Keith always had stocked in his personal ship and whatever Shiro had scrounged from the ready room. Now they were set up on a planet Keith didn’t know the name of, one of the Earth-analogs that Allura had manifested out of thin air when she had rewoven the universe’s quintessence into a setting that might be conducive to peace. What mattered was the climate — hot and pleasant — and the air — breathable — and the swimming hole they’d set camp up near to.

Shiro wiggled his prosthetic fingers, showing off the smooth coating that lined each joint and crevice. “Haven’t had a problem yet.” Then he reached back behind his neck and grasped his shirt, pulling it up and off one-handed. It was a practiced gesture, one that spoke of how comfortable Shiro was in his body. Keith ached at the sight of all Shiro’s skin on display in the planet’s apricot-colored sunlight; he didn’t look perfect, but he exuded a sense of purpose and strength. It wasn’t just the way his muscles curved and gleamed, or the hair sparse around his nipples and thicker down his belly, or even the tan lines from his ridiculous tank tops. Shiro was a complete person. Keith would have admired Shiro even if he’d been shorter, or his skin were a different color, or he’d been fat or thin instead of powerfully built: even when Shiro had been a memory, Keith had wanted to stay close. 

Keith stripped off his own clothing while Shiro toed out of his boots: shirt and leggings, briefs, his own boots and socks, until they were both naked. Well, mostly naked: Shiro had already walked into the water and was floating awkwardly on his back. Keith wasn’t sure if the flowering pondweed was sentient and had draped itself lovingly over Shiro’s crotch, as any right-thinking creature could be forgiven for doing, or if Shiro had done it to make Keith laugh. Either way, it was reminiscent of a classical painting from the old art history textbook they’d shared when Shiro had insisted on taking a Garrison elective together, back in Keith’s first year in the program. 

It was still hard to step into the water, harder than it should have been with Shiro so close and safe beside him. Floating on his own back — the water was body-temperature, and he felt weightless in it — was harder still. He felt unsettled by the way the water, slightly viscous on this planet, lapped at his skin. Body-temperature was somehow too cold. He hated the feeling of having his belly exposed like this, pale and wide and vulnerable. 

The first fifteen minutes in the pool were minutes he kept flipping over in the water, and diving down to curl up in the fetal position on the muddy bottom, hiding in the pondweed until Shiro dove after him and coaxed him back to the surface. 

“You can do this, Keith,” Shiro told him each time. It was kind of him to say so, when Keith knew that Shiro was likewise struggling. His big muscles were tense with restrained energy. The pool was too small to really contain him, not that Shiro ever settled when he felt confined.

“It shouldn’t bother me,” Keith snapped, frustrated with himself, with the way his hind-brain rebelled against what he really wanted: to be _fine_. “It’s just water.”

Shiro regarded him for a moment, standing still and strong and tall while Keith had to tread in place to keep his chin above the water. “It’s hard for me too,” he said, and reached out his hands. Keith grabbed hold immediately, unwilling to leave Shiro waiting for a connection. 

“They used to strip me down to the skin after a match, when I was a prisoner,” Shiro said frankly. He used the tension that followed that remark as an opportunity to pull Keith closer, laying him back until Keith was forced to float. Shiro’s hands were beneath his neck and the small of his back, just below the water’s surface, like helpful ghosts. “They’d turn a hose on us and sluice off the mess from the arena and we’d get a clean uniform, and that was that. No modesty.”

Keith wanted to say that his anxiety wasn’t about modesty — he wasn’t ashamed, at least not about his body — but he focused instead on the cadence of Shiro’s confession, of the way his fingers rose up and glanced off Keith’s back in tiny, unpredictable intervals. He’d gone to an aquarium with a group of foster kids once and gotten to stick his hand on one of the tanks; and the sensations of Shiro’s hands against Keith’s skin was similar to how Keith had felt and loved the feel of the fishes and their sleek scales. 

“Breathe,” Shiro reminded him. Keith exhaled, and inhaled, and waited for the story to continue.

“I wasn’t shy before I left for Kerberos,” Shiro said. “Couldn’t be. All those tests. All that media. All those medical evaluations. Communal living forces the need for privacy right out of you — I know you know that.”

“Yes.” The group home hadn’t been terrible — no one had their own room, but everyone had adopted a sense of blindness after dark, as if the willingness to ignore the sounds of crying or coming or, occasionally, praying, was enough to make them secret again. Privacy, Keith knew, was a state of mind. It didn’t explain why he couldn’t force himself past the terror that plagued him whenever he attempted to exit his safe zone, to play, especially now that the war was over. “It’s not the same thing, now.”

“I didn’t think it was,” Shiro told him. Keith felt Shiro’s hands come more fully into contact with his back, and then there was a discordant splash — Shiro flopping back into the water himself, assuming his lazy backfloat once more. This time he pulled Keith closer into his orbit, until Keith was draped all along Shiro’s front instead of just supported by his hands. It was a surreal feeling, wet and sleek and intimate in a way Keith didn’t know how to compute: the plush-rough texture of Shiro’s chest and belly hair against Keith’s back, the way he hooked his big prosthetic hand across Keith’s collarbones and held him close. Keith didn’t hate it. Keith wanted to be contained.

“You’re warm,” Shiro told him, as though that was a perfectly normal way to continue their conversation. “You feel better than the water.” 

Shiro, too, was warmer than the water. With his back like this — protected, really — Keith realized that the terrible, suspicious part of his brain that kept searching for the next attack had quieted. It wasn’t a total surprise, since Shiro’s presence was always a sign of support, but Keith let himself dwell on it. And he felt, thankfully, Shiro’s own tension drift away as well, as though Keith was performing some similar service: as though guarding Keith’s back was its own kind of freedom. 

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Keith apologized the next morning. It wasn’t really an apology, more a rushed, defensive statement: he _was_ sorry, sorry he needed help at all. He wasn’t sorry that Shiro was giving it to him, even if Keith felt, in some faraway part of his mind, that Shiro was going to regret the gift. People usually did, when it came to Keith, even if Shiro had made a point of proving him wrong. 

Shiro blinked. He was ruffled in a way that indicated both his recent sleep and a strange, reassuring level of _fuck appearances_ he occasionally demonstrated in Keith’s presence. Shiro’s general physical cohesion was his armor, just as much as Keith’s Blade regalia. His ease at showing his cracks — it meant something. It meant almost as much as the empty way Keith’s brain had felt the day before, when they’d floated together in the pool and Shiro had told him not-particularly soothing recollections from his time as a prisoner. 

“Try that again after you’ve fed me,” was all he said. “You’re not making sense, but I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.” 

That was part of their bargain: Keith cooked. Shiro could cook, and even liked to, but Keith needed to feel useful and Shiro was gracious enough to accept the offering. In exchange, he patrolled the edge of the clearing both morning and night. 

Breakfast was laughably simple, even for an impromptu camping trip devoted to jolting Keith out of his postwar paranoia: fruit leather and protein powder mixed with hot water. It didn’t taste anything like coffee, but it was the kind of breakfast that Shiro could inhale and that would assuage Keith’s own tempestuous metabolism. If not for the protein powder, it would have been Ensure. Hunk spent a lot of time fretting over Keith’s diet and emailing him meal plans, but for now, this worked.

“Right,” Shiro said, washing down his share of protein drink with another serving of hot water, “run that by me again: you’re apologizing. I assume you didn’t do something ridiculous while I was asleep, so I’m guessing this is about yesterday’s float therapy.”

“It’s a lot,” Keith agreed miserably. “I’m a lot. I know.”

“If I were less well-fed, I’d be offended by the implication that I’m wasting my time,” Shiro said. His tone was dry, even for him: Keith wondered if the nearby pond was experiencing a drop in its water levels. “You’re important to me.”

“You’re important to me, too,” Keith said in response. It was a complicated feeling: trusting Shiro, believing in Shiro, loving Shiro. All that added up to knowing that when Shiro said Keith was important, it was the truth. Even at his most skittish, Keith still believed in Shiro: his capacity to hurt Keith, the certainty that he would never do so. 

Shiro huffed into the silence between them. It stretched out like taffy while Keith thought things over. If it had a color to go with its almost physical weight, Keith thought it might be the same unbearable purple that had limned everything in the Astral plane. 

Overhead, a tree branch cracked and the local equivalent of a squirrel missed its jump; it landed hard on the ground between them with a hollow _thump_ , so comical that when it staggered back to its paws and wobbled away, Keith laughed out loud. It wasn’t a sound he was used to hearing from his own throat, and the rusty squawk of it made Shiro snort in turn. They sounded like half of a band of animal musicians, on their way to Bremen Town. 

“It just — _thump,_ ” Shiro gasped. He wasn’t beautiful when he laughed. He turned red all the way up to his wonderful ears, and the scar across his nose made his guffaws sound like a belt-sander in need of a tune-up. 

“No dignity,” Keith agreed, and slapped his palm flat against the ground to imitate the percussive impact. That set them both off again, until their sides ached with mirth and Shiro had collapsed sideways on top of Keith’s shins. 

“Too bad that squirrel didn’t have a Keith,” Shiro said at last. “To catch it when it fell.”

“ _Shiro._ ”

“That squirrel would know it was always going to be okay, if it had a Keith,” he continued, ruthless. “Just like I know we’re going to be okay. Maybe not right away. But I couldn’t ask for better company.” 

“I love you,” Keith said. Shiro was still lying across Keith’s legs, not quite in his lap: there was no escape, and Keith didn’t want even the possibility of one. He’d spent a long time staring at Shiro’s face from any angle at which he’d been allowed to perceive it: in profile, straight on, from above as he’d waited for the fall. Keith didn’t know Shiro from this vantage point, atop but tilted so the morning light cast dark shadows beneath his cheeks, his nose, under his lower lip. It was an intense view, unflattering and somehow more important because of it. Keith wanted to meet that gaze in turn, but Shiro already knew all of Keith’s ugliness. Shiro didn’t think Keith was ugly. 

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Shiro announced. He eeled himself up Keith’s body in pursuit of this goal, and the pressure was intense. Keith savored the anticipation, the way he fell back and caught a stray twig uncomfortably beneath one scapula; Keith wanted to wind his arms about Shiro’s neck as Shiro drew closer, but he wanted more for Shiro to feel safe in turn, to have his body free of all restraints, and so left his hands raised and hovering for a moment before relaxing down. 

It was awkward at first. Shiro’s mouth was hard against Keith’s own, and Keith was so enamored of the mere announcement of a kiss that he forgot to open up and let Shiro lead for a moment. But then Shiro adjusted his weight, and pinned Keith down better, and bit gently at Keith’s lip to remind him to breathe. Keith gasped and then flinched with desire when Shiro licked past his teeth, grappled Keith’s body out flat and welcoming on the ground. Dirt was stirring itself into the soft hair at the back of Keith’s head and the stone beneath his shoulder was brilliantly painful, and Shiro’s mouth was humid and a little astringent from the leftover artificial sweetener of their morning protein shake. 

“That’s good,” Shiro crooned, and wormed his flesh hand beneath Keith’s skull; the prosthetic buzzed warmly as Shiro gathered Keith’s hands beneath it, and held them flat above his head. “Turn your head a bit,” and then he nuzzled approvingly against the curve of his cheek when Keith did. 

Neither of them said much after that, but they weren’t silent, either. Keith felt his toes curl as Shiro ground their hips together and taught Keith how to rock against him in turn; he felt hot and small beneath Shiro’s body, for all they weren’t too far apart in height these days. Keith wanted to swallow every sound Shiro made against his mouth, the slide of his tongue, the way he coaxed and soothed and teased, until Keith forgot he even had a body — he forgot how to be aware of his surroundings at all. There was just Shiro, Shiro holding him down and coddling him. 

“You’re so good,” Keith rasped later, after Shiro had repositioned them both. The new arrangement felt slightly fragile, like Shiro was practicing: he had Keith stretched out atop him, like he’d done when they had floated in the pool. It wasn’t much of a restraint. Keith knew it would be laughably simple to dislodge Keith from where he lay, back to Shiro’s chest, Shiro’s arm wrapped around him in the gentlest of holds.

No. Not a hold; not a restraint. An _embrace_. Keith thought he might get used to the concept. He felt lax and warm, like his spine had turned to some kind of semisolid. Shiro scratched his free hand into the dense length of Keith’s hair, making a halfhearted attempt at grooming the dirt out. It was a losing battle; Keith was overjoyed by it.

“I’m as good as you let me be,” Shiro said. He blew softly in Keith’s ear and laughed at the resulting flinch. “You weren’t expecting that, huh, sweetheart.”

“I don’t expect anything from you,” Keith told him. “But I want everything.”

“Well,” Shiro said, and he sounded so, so pleased; Keith hadn’t heard him this relaxed in years, and cuddled closer to encourage it, the same way he had cleared out that office drawer when he realized Shiro wasn’t going to find his own space, “we’ll keep practicing. You and me. That’s the mission.”

As promises went, it was open-ended: a new frontier. Keith had wanted to explore the universe with Shiro ever since he’d learned it was an option that was available to him. 

“Whatever it takes,” Keith said. 

* * *

“When I said you needed a hobby,” Hunk told him a few months later, “I kind of meant something productive. Not — whatever you’re calling this.” _This_ was accompanied by a vague hand gesture meant to encompass the way Keith had half-swum, half-slogged through the surf and launched himself into Shiro’s arms. They had, in fact, been practicing: this was the first time Keith had held on to Shiro in front of another person.

“I’m playing,” Keith protested. He shoved his face into the crook of Shiro’s neck and shoulder, harder than he’d meant to, and savored the grounding abrasion of Shiro’s wetsuit against his cheek. “It was a pretend-shark attack.”

“Yeah, Hunk,” Shiro chimed in, shifting one hand away from the surfboard he was holding so he could heft Keith up onto his hip, so Keith could wrap his legs around Shiro’s waist. The water was buoyant with salt and Keith felt weightless, comforted by the pressure of Shiro’s arm around him, Shiro’s powerful body clasped between Keith’s thighs. “It’s an enrichment exercise, I can’t believe you of all people would take offense to Keith expanding his sense of wonder.”

“I’m aware your body is a wonderland,” Hunk said. He rolled his eyes and turned his broad back to the two of them, moving to hoist himself out of the water and astride his own board. He looked noble and affronted, like a seal disturbed from rest and determined to salvage the situation. “But no offense, man, this isn’t what I expected when you called me up and said you wanted to try surfing again.”

“You have a better imagination than me,” Keith told him. “What did you expect?”

In lieu of dignifying that with a response, Hunk slapped the water and splashed the both of them. No matter: the sun was hot and bright and clear, the breeze was warm, and Hunk was already shifting back into his teaching-mode, discussing the finer points of balance and waves and play. They’d walk out of the sea and dry off soon enough, when they wanted to.

**Author's Note:**

> On a personal note, this event is my first anniversary in the Sheith fandom, and I'm so happy to be here. y'all are the mvp. (I'm [on twitter,](https://twitter.com/boggremlin) shy but very happy to talk!)


End file.
